Washington (CNN) -- With a congressional hearing set for week's end, President Obama vowed Monday to hold the Internal Revenue Service accountable if reports of political targeting turn out to be true.

"If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous. And there's no place for it," Obama told reporters.

"And they have to be held fully accountable. Because the IRS as an independent agency requires absolute integrity, and people have to have confidence that they're ... applying the laws in a nonpartisan way."

(Reuters) - A senior Internal Revenue Service official knew in 2011 that IRS agents were giving extra scrutiny to conservative Tea Party groups, according to documents from a watchdog office obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

Nevertheless, a dream come true for the social engineering enthusiasts at Ars Technica.

Each year the IRS reviews as many as 60,000 tax-exempt applications from groups ranging from charities to labor unions. Some are classified as 501(c)(4) groups after the section of the tax code that makes them tax-exempt. Such organizations can collect money from anonymous donors and spend it on advertising.

To get and keep their tax-exempt status, 501(c)(4) groups cannot endorse a political candidate or a political party.

The number of groups seeking 501(c)(4) status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, coinciding in part with the surge of Tea Party enthusiasm. In 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its "Citizens United" decision lifting government limits on corporate spending in federal elections.

I don't know why the IRS is apologizing. The surge of applications in the wake of the Tea Party hysteria were ripe for graft and should have been scrutinized. Bad actors filing as 501's improperly are thieves and tax dodgers.

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Nevertheless, a dream come true for the social engineering enthusiasts at Ars Technica.

I don't know why the IRS is apologizing. The surge of applications in the wake of the Tea Party hysteria were ripe for graft and should have been scrutinized. Bad actors filing as 501's improperly are thieves and tax dodgers.

What surge of applications? What about the OWS-affiliated groups, and why are you blaming the victims?

I don't know why the IRS is apologizing. The surge of applications in the wake of the Tea Party hysteria were ripe for graft and should have been scrutinized. Bad actors filing as 501's improperly are thieves and tax dodgers.

What surge of applications? What about the OWS-affiliated groups, and why are you blaming the victims?

I cited data. Kindly do the same.

Also, for there to be a victim let alone to blame one, someone or something must have been injured. Who, specifically and with evidence, was injured?

Founded in early October by former British diplomat Carne Ross, the 60-person Alternative Banking Group has become a repository for OWS-friendly financial insiders. It includes current and former investment bankers, traders, and lawyers for the securities industry, but also many laymen—including housewives, people who used to sleep in Zuccotti Park, and guys with piercings who wear Che Guevara T-shirts. The group shares Occupy Wall Street's website, its nonhierarchical structure, and its distaste for partisan politics. "I'd say the one thing that everybody agrees on is that the system isn't working," O'Neil says. "And there is nothing about being a Republican or a Democrat in that statement."

WASHINGTON — A few weeks before announcing his re-election campaign, President Obama convened two dozen Wall Street executives, many of them longtime donors, in the White House’s Blue Room.

The guests were asked for their thoughts on how to speed the economic recovery, then the president opened the floor for over an hour on hot issues like hedge fund regulation and the deficit.

Mr. Obama, who enraged many financial industry executives a year and a half ago by labeling them “fat cats” and criticizing their bonuses, followed up the meeting with phone calls to those who could not attend.

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Also, for there to be a victim let alone to blame one, someone or something must have been injured. Who, specifically and with evidence, was injured?

The groups the IRS apologized to after the political targeting became publicly known.

It was a shitty thing for the IRS to do and they should be held accountable. But I can't see anyone really being shocked that the tax collectors were scrutinizing a group explicitly formed around being against taxes. Now the tea party gets to be the victim and everyone else just has to nod along. Thanks IRS.

The I.R.S. has done little to regulate a flood of political spending by larger groups — like Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, co-founded by Mr. Rove, and Priorities USA, with close ties to President Obama — as well as Republican leaders in Congress and other elected officials. And an agency that is supposed to stay as far away from partisan politics as possible has been left in charge — almost by accident — of regulating a huge amount of election spending.

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Over the last two years, government watchdog groups filed more than a dozen complaints with the Internal Revenue Service seeking inquiries into whether large nonprofit organizations like those founded by the Republican political operative Karl Rove and former Obama administration aides had violated their tax-exempt status by spending tens of millions of dollars on political advertising.

The I.R.S. never responded.

During the same period, the agency singled out dozens of Tea Party-inspired groups that had applied for I.R.S. recognition, officials acknowledged on Friday, subjecting them to rounds of detailed questioning about their political activities. None of those groups were big spenders on political advertising; most were local Tea Party organizations with shoestring budgets.

It's funny, at first when I saw this I thought this was straight up a legit scandal. Then I heard a conservative commentator (though I'm sure many would brand him a RINO) say that because these are supposedly non-political groups, as required by law that the IRS enforces, wouldn't you expect the IRS to look at groups using overtly political terms in their names?

Then today on whatever the show Chris Hayes has on MSNBC he outlined just how much Citizens United fucked everything up. Since CU said basically any org can run political ads, how can we actually enforce if a group is acting as a social good group or a political group? There's no good way to enforce it. And, in my opinion, since we cannot enforce it, we should strip 501(c)(4) groups from non-profit status and their contributions no longer will be deductible on your taxes. Sorry, when a system gets abused, everyone loses. At my work we had a very generous education program that would pay for anything (even glass blowing at the community college if that is what you like and makes you a happy employee) but too many assholes got JDs and jumped ship so now benefits for everyone get slashed. It's how corporations operate so I see no reason for anyone on the libertarian or the US right to complain about the loss of tax exempt status for these organizations.

So you are requiring him to source your sources you have already presented?

No, and I don't think you read my post.

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Sorry, when a system gets abused, everyone loses. At my work we had a very generous education program that would pay for anything (even glass blowing at the community college if that is what you like and makes you a happy employee) but too many assholes got JDs and jumped ship so now benefits for everyone get slashed. It's how corporations operate so I see no reason for anyone on the libertarian or the US right to complain about the loss of tax exempt status for these organizations.

The problem, in the IRS case, is that the tax status is selectively applied in practice and favors major donors over grassroots organizations. When you support getting rid of tax exemption you effectively support what the IRS is doing to discriminate against grassroots parties, because they have ended up under heavier tax scrutiny.

The problem, in the IRS case, is that the tax status is selectively applied in practice and favors major donors over grassroots organizations. When you support getting rid of tax exemption you effectively support what the IRS is doing to discriminate against grassroots parties, because they have ended up under heavier scrutiny when taxes are due.

What type of grassroots parties? Grassroots political parties? Political organizations are specifically denied tax-exempt/non-profit status.

As for your assertion on what is wrong, previously you said it was wrong because they didn't go after the OWS crowd, are you saying that wasn't grassroots. I am much more sympathetic to the notion that OWS was much more oriented towards improving the social good than any Tea Party/ 9/12 / Patriot / No Muslims in the White House groups were. The Koch sponsored tea party mantra of "fuck you I got mine" is in fact detrimental to the social good and only oriented to one party.

And I am not advocating they end up under heavier tax scrutiny, if all 501 organizations are treated as for profit then none of them should escape the scrutiny of the IRS. And if we were smart, we would investigate the largest organizations first to maximize the return on the salary we are paying investigators. It's just smart business sense. You aren't going to pay an IRS man 80 grand a year to look into a group that could net a finding of say 50k in improper declarations. You are going to pay him 80k to find 2M of improper declarations and lost revenue to the government at the huge super PACs.

It's too bad GWB directed IRS investigators after welfare moms. No wonder he ran an oil company into the ground.

What type of grassroots parties? Grassroots political parties? Political organizations are specifically denied tax-exempt/non-profit status.

Local organizers for example as discussed in the NYT article. Both grassroots and mainstream political organizations are taxed, but the former are under more scrutiny.

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As for your assertion on what is wrong, previously you said it was wrong because they didn't go after the OWS crowd, are you saying that wasn't grassroots

It is grassroots, and there are many things I agree with OWS on like opposing the bailouts, I'm offering it as an example of another grassroots organization which could be targeted in the same way and which you, presumably, would be more concerned about.

I apologize, thank you for bringing that up. The IRS is guilty of political repression against different groups. As for the NAACP being a liberal group, not necessarily. But that's a minor derail on my part.

Slate: Ron Paul answered a question about his old newsletters by saying he was the most anti-racist candidate: He wanted fair criminal justice reform. Did you buy it?

Jealous: We've (NAACP) found common cause with libertarians across the South, for years. In Texas, Ron Paul's state, we've passed a dozen progressive criminal justice reforms last year, working with the Tea Party. In South Carolina we got one-to-one on crack versus powder, which we couldn't get Congress to do when Democrats controlled it. In Georgia, we just pushed through the biggest review of criminal justice policy in the entire country, again, working with a Tea Party governor and Tea Party supporters. Criminal justice reform is, if you will, the big silent agreement in this country. It's ideas like treatment instead of incarceration appeal from libertarians to liberals alike, to progressives and conservatives alike.

Listen, as a dirty foreigner from a country with high taxes and strong socialist tendencies (who should probably be bombed or something), I still think that it's fucking weird for your IRS to target specific groups - unless they see reasons to do so. They obviously did, since it doesn't take a genius to realise that "no limits on corporate spending in elections -> rise of political groups that want tax-exempt status since that ruling -> hmmm, corporations might actually be using this to get away with illegal shit" is something you'd want to look into.

It was a shitty thing for the IRS to do and they should be held accountable. But I can't see anyone really being shocked that the tax collectors were scrutinizing a group explicitly formed around being against taxes. Now the tea party gets to be the victim and everyone else just has to nod along. Thanks IRS.

A few key points:1. The way they were 'auditing' these groups was illegal. The IRS is not allowed to ask questions about donors and other such matters with regards to the type of groups we're talking about. Of the involved questionnaires sent, almost none of the information requested could lawfully be required.

2. The groups in question did not need to be 'non-political'. I'm not sure where this bit of misinformation comes from, but I've heard it a lot. It's incorrect. The only restriction 501(4)(c) groups have on political activity is in terms of direct contributions to candidates - and that restriction doesn't preclude their doing it, it's just that any funds they use for that purpose cannot be claimed as tax exempt. If you want to start a 501(4)(c) to campaign to fund your local television ads for marijuana legalization, that's a perfectly legitimate use of the tax exempt status.

I doubt it will ever be revealed, but there is often an assumption that those that dislike government are more likely to cheat. Comparing the rates of finding issues these audits with non-targeted audits could settle that question, as it doe always seem to be an unquantified assumption.

We can talk about this being an OMG big deal when Republicans apologize for defending the IRS targeting the NAACP and churches that spoke out against the War in 2004 . Also when they apologize using the FBI to investigate anti-War groups like Mennonites using the FBI during the Bush Administration.

This is even less of a thing then Benghazi, and yet again -- it's only a scandal when it happens to Republicans. This shit is old.

The number of groups seeking 501(c)(4) status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, coinciding in part with the surge of Tea Party enthusiasm. In 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its "Citizens United" decision lifting government limits on corporate spending in federal elections.

So while the Tea Party movement may have been in decline (an assertion with which I disagree), the more relevant thing is that due to Citizens United they were now able to apply for 501(c)(4) status, which has been very attractive for issue groups.

The problem here is pretty easy to see, and is twofold. One, the one office that handles these applications was not prepared for the (somewhat predictable) surge in applications after the Citizens United case. Two, the in-house solution they developed to help triage that surge was subjective and wrong.

While people should certainly be fired, it seems a stretch to label it, as some commentators have (and Tea Party activists have) as a coordinated and sustained action by the IRS against the Tea Party as a whole.

But I tell you what, I promise to get 100% behind a root-and-branch investigation of this (and Benghazi as well, for that matter), just as soon as there's a root-and-branch investigation, with actual consequences, of the faulty KBR showers that killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBR_(company)#Professional_negligence

Official moderation notice.

The moderators are reviewing this thread for multiple reports of trolling.

While we review dickrick's "contribution" here, I feel compelled to point out this kind of content-free garbage is unwelcome and only contributed to the train-wreck. Especially since you've just recently returned from a one-week temporary ban.

The immaturity on this board is incredible at times. It's still satisfying to know that liberals resort to trolling when presented with the slightest dose of reality.

Were you that 1-13-2 Teemo last night talking shit about how bad I played every time I killed you? Seriously, address the things people say, don't just double down on the shit talking when someone makes a point you don't like.

As for your assertion on what is wrong, previously you said it was wrong because they didn't go after the OWS crowd, are you saying that wasn't grassroots. I am much more sympathetic to the notion that OWS was much more oriented towards improving the social good than any Tea Party/ 9/12 / Patriot / No Muslims in the White House groups were. The Koch sponsored tea party mantra of "fuck you I got mine" is in fact detrimental to the social good and only oriented to one party.

I think the rub is it's difficult to separate social good from politics. When Michelle Bachman says MN shouldn't allow gay marriage because the twin cities will become the next Sodom and Gomorrah, she's advocated for what she feels is a social good. Society would be worse off if there were literal hellfire raining down on us. I think she's wrong. For the sake of humanity I hope most people agree with me. But the IRS shouldn't be making value judgments about who's beliefs are better for society.

Official moderation notice.

We normally discourage creating a thread in a "link and run" fashion, where the original poster shares a link but offers no substantive comment of their own. However given that there was already discussion of this subject in the random news thread, and this breaking off into a dedicated thread was inevitable, we're generally inclined towards taking a more relaxed stance on that issue here.

What we aren't going to tolerate is trolling. The only original content offered by dickrick in his opening post, was to make an apparent jab at the readership of the Soap Box. That set the stage for a thread dominated by personal attacks, trolling, and armchair moderation.

For dickrick this will serve as your third Official Warning, and a one-week temporary ban. For everyone else, you need to stop feeding the trolls.

Also, wasn't this a particular office and not the whole "IRS" in general. Details matter.

My understanding is that this isn't a little 2 story corner office type. It is a major hub for the IRS.Edit: Regardless:

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IRS officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating the groups, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to a report in Tuesday’s Washington Post.

/edit

One thing that doesn't seem to have made it into this thread is this same IRS group provided confidential application to the public interest investigative journalism group ProPublica.

The scandal here should be the way conservative groups flouted the 501(c)(4) rules for the 2012 election. This, plus the way Stephen Colbert made a mockery of SuperPACs last year, really makes one wonder if there's any point to even attempting campaign finance reform at this point.